Amanda + James

AMANDA+JAMES is a New York-based non-profit arts production company dedicated to producing the work of young artists. We provide a space for this community to follow creative impulses, refine ideas into projects, and collaborate and learn from their peers.

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Recently from Amanda+James

Tonight we open FAMILY with @hoipolloiworld • A

Tonight we open FAMILY with @hoipolloiworld • A HUGE TOI TOI TOI to our fabulous cast and crew! • Thrilled to say that the immersive run of this darkest of comedies—by the inimitable @helloellephanta—has already extended due to demand, so get your tickets while you can!

Photograph by Maria Baranova

Happy Opening Night + a huge TOI TOI TOI to the br

Happy Opening Night + a huge TOI TOI TOI to the brilliant, wonderful cast + crew of El Niño @metopera featuring A+J artists Davóne Tines @alsoanoperasinger [American Gothic, 2015], and Siman Chung @siman_chung [Sessions Vol. XIII, 2019]!

The production by @lileanablaincruzofficial [J caught the Final Dress] is a vibrant, maximalist-baroque, technicolor vision of a story of Motherhood and Migrancy as timely and poignant as ever in John Adams’ score which is by turns achingly beautiful and relentless. GO SEE IT! Thru May 17, @metoperachorus + @metorchestra SHINE!

Anyone know a tintype photographer we can hire for

Anyone know a tintype photographer we can hire for our gala?
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PS Come celebrate with us April 6

With heavy hearts, we will be canceling tomorrow’s performance of modjeskamodjeskamodjeska due to our current air quality crisis in New York.

The artist @pariscyancian would like to share the following words:

“It is my hope that with this knowing, it offers all of us an opportunity to LOOK UP and take note of the reality of our climate emergency. I hope that you take care of yourselves in the process, no matter where you reside in the world, because in reality it impacts us all. Honor your own needs of your health and be attentive to those around you. Whether it be a hurricane, wildfires, air pollution, earthquakes etc. the land is speaking to us and it is important to listen.”

There will be a performance of modjeskamodjeskamodjeska next week in New Orleans on Thursday, June 15th. You can find more information about that performance by following @theshore.co

Our next 2023 Summer Happenings Festival artist Sa

Our next 2023 Summer Happenings Festival artist Sabina Sethi Unni @sabinathegreat will direct and perform in A Fun Play about How Scary Climate Change Is at Rockaway Beach on Saturday, June 10th. This play will be performed three times at 3pm, 5pm, and 8pm.

This work is a comedic, site-specific devised theater piece set in waterfront parks across NYC about striving for hope (not despair) in the face of climate change, with fantastical swamp creatures to teach us these lessons.

Introducing our next set of 2023 Summer Happenings

Introducing our next set of 2023 Summer Happenings Festival artists: Stuart B Meyers and Brandon Kazen-Maddox

@stuartbmeyers and @bkazenmaddox will perform “Never Can Say Goodbye,” a new sound and performance installation. This piece reckons with what Pier 45, or Christopher St Pier, was. Once a queer safe haven, the pier was a center for cruising, community, and connection before its demolition in the 1980s. In this work, a constellation of intimate choreographies unfold while a sea of soundscapes feature formal historiographies, first-person accounts, literary writings, disco, and the performers' own thoughts about the pier’s impact on queer life.

Our next A+J 2023 Summer Happenings Festival art

Our next A+J 2023 Summer Happenings Festival artist is Mina Nishimura!

@minanekobubble will perform Untitled [astral-projection-is-not-likely-to-happen-in-a-public-space!] at Squibb Park on Friday, June 16th at 5pm.

Inspired by astral projection practice and the odd nothingness of Squibb Park, this work explores a possible impossible disconnection between mind and body, and body and space while playing with various modalities of no-mindness.

With a curiosity for blurring the boundary between private and public realms, this work also attempts to drag out and expose an unprotected internal journey to the odd public site while vibrating and enlivening energy of the void-ness of the space.

The Summer Happenings Festival is BACK! This time

The Summer Happenings Festival is BACK! This time with 6 wonderful performances artists / collectives who are contemplating the meaning and importance of and performing alongside NYC’s COASTLINES.
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Visit link in bio for information on all the performances June 9-18 and to register for FREE tickets. We can’t wait to see you by the sea (/ river).
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Curated and produced by @amandaplusjames and @asiastewart

Our next A+J 2023 Summer Happenings Festival art

Our next A+J 2023 Summer Happenings Festival artist collective is Cosmophage!

@cosmophage (run by @notthedeliveryguy and @jem_._ma )will be performing From The Outside In: A Tea Ceremony at Bush Terminal Pier Park from 1pm - 6pm.

Cosmophage Collective will create a tea ceremony at Bush Terminal Piers Park – at the convergence of cement and river. The structure of the tea ceremony will create a space of slow reverence for the waterscape.

In this ceremony, participants will rupture our current experience of time, and through tea, reweave the connection between ourselves and our surroundings. For long minutes, a series of gestures (creating heat, warming water, pouring, smelling, tasting, and feeling) transform water, leaves, and bodies into a practice of awe. Time extends outwards, and the ability to sense the world grows with it.

A+J is excited to introduce the artists performing

A+J is excited to introduce the artists performing in the 2023 Summer Happenings Festival!

@g.corbino will be performing Unusual Mortality Events at Valentino Pier on Sunday, June 18th at 7pm.

Unusual Mortality Events is a collective puppet poem of wonder and grief with a 16 foot Humpback Whale puppet accompanied by a chorus of singers. Inspired by the audio recordings of Humpbacks, Fin, Sei, and North Atlantic Right Whales recorded just off the coast of NYC, the singers will create songs of oceanic awe.

Sightlines opens TONIGHT at 7:30 with new works by

Sightlines opens TONIGHT at 7:30 with new works by @thatguywen and @___jessie__y at #coffeystreetstudio
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There are still a few tickets available (link in bio) and we will also sell at the door for any crazy kids who decide to come to Red Hook at the last minute.
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Photos by @e.mertz.photography

A glimpse of “The People Show” by @thatguywen

A glimpse of “The People Show” by @thatguywen seen by @weiss.soserious - performances May 18, 19 and 24!
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Support the performers @draminica @briabacon @rachheyhello by donating to @thatguywen fundraiser!! Link in his bio.
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You’re going to be watching an internal logic. You’re going to be sitting in a seat, looking at people who are pretending you’re not there. They’re in an empty venue, rehearsing for something that’s not quite done yet.
Unreality on display
Movement that comes from the rhythms of the body, actually falling, actually balancing But done in an order that you might not understand, for reasons unknown to you
The rhythm is: The Most Casual, The Most Casual High Leg, perfect form out of nowhere, falling out of it, shuffle and adjust, repeat
Set choreography in all its forms from the mundane to the maximum
Clean eclectic grounded, somehow it’s always about the friction of feet against the floor
It’s about the bond of rehearsing, watching people attempt to make something work
An ode to the time-honored tradition of marking, to the ritual of practicing and debriefing and trying it again - @weiss.soserious

le sigh choreographed by @___jessie__y (direction

le sigh choreographed by @___jessie__y (direction and dramaturgy by @wakingstephanie )seen by @weiss.soserious Come see it yourself May 18, 20 or 25! - link in bio for tix and dm for the artist discount!
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Jessie is moving, slowly From poet to technician
Boiling the bones of her training Learning from the classes she’s teaching
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Jessie is moving out of the dark
“There will be bright lights, and I’d like to think the sound is going to be loud” Finding a song, making Dance
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“I feel like I’m making a piece the way I did in high school”
Some form of hedonism: discovering over a lifetime, how to feel good. Getting specific.
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How much time does she need to do this? 30� hours
How does she need to rehearse? Consistently, wearing the costume
What does she need to wear? Something simple, something that lets her flesh move. Maybe shoes
What does she need from the audience? To watch her the way she watches dance: like it’s an atmosphere
What does she need the audience to get? Something to hold on to, to be taken on a ride What does she need the audience to feel? “Oh god, I can’t control that”
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It’s a dialogue: conversation with self (a good warm-up), conversation with other people �Stephanie Acosta), conversation with past (technique), conversation with audience (performance)
Something as simple, or as complicated, as circles . - @weiss.soserious

Glimpses of “How much time do we have left” ch

Glimpses of “How much time do we have left” choreographed by @ahameline and witnessed by @weiss.soserious
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Come see @ahameline @sierrahendrix @annita_hullita @jaceweyant and @bhaile count down May 19, 21 and 25 at #coffeystreetstudio
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“How much time do we have left?”
At every show, one lucky person will be chosen to be The Audience Member. They will keep time, pay attention, and give the performers a chance to perform.
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What are they performing? Themselves, versions upon versions of themselves.
But what you don’t know is...the dancer didn’t make the phrase
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But what you don’t know is...what they just said was a lie.
But what you don’t know is...someone’s going to come through the garage door at any minute.
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A projection arrives, layered photos of the dance you’re seeing in front of you. A dance that has been done time and time again, in this room, weeks before you even arrived.
Same space, different time.
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How many times have you done this before? A line dance, a piece of choreography, a morning routine.
Repetition as the seam between live and prerecorded.
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In the end, going to a show is just people watching
It’s about finding the spectacular in the mundane, the fascination of seeing someone do next to nothing. - @weiss.soserious

GLIMPSES by Sightlines Writer-in-Residence @weiss.

GLIMPSES by Sightlines Writer-in-Residence @weiss.soserious welcomes you into the questions, curiosities and themes of each of the festival’s new works
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Starting with @nattietroggie and @holbart’s FALLACIES 🪩👯💚 Come catch a glimpse May 20, 21 + 24
at #coffeystreetstudio
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“Fallacies”
Is this...real dance? Really a dance? Really your dance?
Scrolling through their rolodex of movement history, Nattie and Hollis are doing a deep dive into the dances that shape them. It’s movies and music videos, high production performances that have been captured and disseminated across space/time/bodies.
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Pull apart movement quality, choreography, and performance style. Strip it for parts. Is it about the source material or is it about how you do it?
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Try it again like Martha. Try it like Michael. Try it like Kate. Try it like Trisha. Try it like Hollis, like Nattie.
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Find a portal for movement. That hip from Fosse becomes Single Ladies becomes Regina George becomes the jazz class you took when you were ten years old. Become the dancer you tried to be when you were fifteen, twenty one, thirty three.
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When is a reference known? Seen? Recognized? Stolen? - by @weiss.soserious

Final choreographer in our Sightlines lineup is A+

Final choreographer in our Sightlines lineup is A+J co-Director @ahameline. Come see her work featuring @annita_hullita @jaceweyant @sierrahendrix and @bhaile Friday May 19, Sunday May 20 or Thursday May 25! (Also come take class led by @ahameline and @thatguywen before the performance at 4pm on Friday)
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Amanda Hameline is a choreographer, producer, dancer, and designer. In her work, she places the mundane in conversation with the strange and uses technology–from live sound design to video projection to stacks of cardboard boxes–to augment, expand and complicate the human form and experience. She has presented work in venues across New York City including CPR-Center for Performance Research, National Sawdust, Coffey Street Studio, Christie’s New York, the Chelsea Hotel, Pace Gallery, Dixon Place, Triskelion Arts, and Martha Graham Studio Theater; and in Berlin at Lake Studios and Cordillera. Her film work has been featured in the Triskelion Dance Film Festival, ScreenDance Miami, and Exquisite Frame (Dance Place in DC). Amanda is also the co-founder of the non-profit production company Amanda + James, which presents and develops dance, opera, performance art, theater, music and everything in between. Amanda’s work for A+J focuses on curating and developing new programs to support experimental and interdisciplinary movement artists. MFA Sarah Lawrence ’20; BA Harvard University ’12. www.amandahameline / www.amandaplusjames.com /
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Photos by @canigetawhitney video by @allducksrock

The third Sightlines choreographer is actually two

The third Sightlines choreographer is actually two - Nattie + Hollis! Come see @nattietroggie and @holbart on Saturday May 20, Sunday May 21 and Wednesday May 24!
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Nattie Trogdon + Hollis Bartlett are partners in both life and their creative endeavors. Based in Lenapehoking (currently known as Brooklyn, NY), they construct dance works, films and research based practices aimed to disrupt assumptions of performance and personhood. Their collaborations have been presented at Gibney (Work Up Artists), CPR, Duo Multicultural Arts Center, No Theme Festival, Earthdance, Brick Alley Block Party at Garner Arts Center, The Long Time Texas, Future Dance Festival at the 92nd Street Y, Motion State Dance Festival, Mobile Dance Film Festival, The Dance Complex, and the School for Contemporary Dance and Thought; and they have been awarded artist residencies through the New Directions Choreography Lab at The Ailey School, Marble House, The Atlantic Center for the Arts, The Visionary, MOtiVE Brooklyn, Mana Contemporary, and the Tisch Summer Dance Residency at NYU. Their performing and teaching practices are deeply tied into their dance making. As performers, they’ve worked with Doug Varone, Kathy Westwater, Brian Brooks, Joanna Kotze, David Dorfman, and Keith Johnson. They’ve been guest artists at NYU, Swarthmore College, and SUNY Brockport and their work has been commissioned by Roger Williams University, University of Maryland, and Salem State University. Currently they are adjunct faculty at SUNY Purchase and Montclair State, and teach open class throughout NYC. https://nattieandhollis.com/
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Photos by @canigetawhitney video by @allducksrock

Next up in the Sightlines choreographer preview se

Next up in the Sightlines choreographer preview series - @thatguywen !!
Wendell will be performing Thursday May 18, Friday May 19 and Wednesday May 24, all at #coffeystreetstudio 153 Coffey Street.
Link in bio for tix and plz reach out if you need the artist discount!
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Wendell Gray II is a Brooklyn based dance artist, choreographer, and teacher. He has performed in the works of artists including Tere O’Connor, Joanna Kotze, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd, Kevin Beasley, Pavel Zustiak, Maria Bauman, Jonah Bokaer, Christal Brown, J Bouey, and more. As a maker, Wendell has shown his work at Kinosaito Arts Center, Gibney, Center for Performance Research (CPR), Movement Research at Judson Church, La Mama Galleria, and Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. He has also been supported by residencies with STUFFED at Judson Church, Chez Bushwick, Work Up 6.0 at Gibney, and the Black Diaspora Space Grant. He has additionally set work on companies including Michiyaya Dance, Pennsylvania Ballet II, Philadanco II, and Periapsis Music and Dance. He received his BFA in Dance from the University of the Arts in 2015 under the direction of Donna Faye Burchfield and was raised in Atlanta, GA. For more information, visit wenings.com.
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Photos by @canigetawhitney video by @allducksrock

Sightlines Choreographer @___jessie__y is performi

Sightlines Choreographer @___jessie__y is performing Thursday May 18, Saturday May 20 and Thursday May 25! Tix at link in bio. All performances at #coffeystreetstudio 153 Coffey St
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Jessie Young is a Brooklyn-based choreographer, performer and teacher originally from Port Angeles, Washington. In New York her work has been presented by PAGEANT, The Chocolate Factory, New York Live Arts (Fresh Tracks), Danspace (DraftWork), Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Center for Performance Research, Amanda + James, Brooklyn Studios for Dance, AUNTS, Dixon Place, and The Floor on Atlantic. As a performer and collaborator, she has worked with Tere O’Connor, Beth Gill, Julie Mayo, Abby Z and the New Utility and Stephanie Acosta amongst others. Young is currently an artist in residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2021-23) Center for Performance Research (2022). She received her MFA from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and BFA from University of Utah, and is on faculty at the American Dance Festival and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. Jessie-Young.com
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Photos by @canigetawhitney video by @allducksrock

Sightlines tickets are ON SALE and link is in bio.

Sightlines tickets are ON SALE and link is in bio. The show changes every night so double check the schedule before you purchase
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Thursday May 18 – JESSIE YOUNG (@___jessie__y )and WENDELL GRAY II(@thatguywen )
Friday May 19 – WENDELL GRAY II and AMANDA HAMELINE (@ahameline )
Saturday May 20 – NATTIE + HOLLIS (@nattietroggie @holbart )and JESSIE YOUNG
Sunday May 21 – AMANDA HAMELINE and NATTIE + HOLLIS
Wednesday May 24 – NATTIE + HOLLIS and WENDELL GRAY II
Thursday May 25 – AMANDA HAMELINE and JESSIE YOUNG
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Amanda + James presents Sightlines, a new dance residency and performance program curated by @holbart and @ahameline featuring four new works by a group of choreographers sharing their work in conversation with each other. Presented at Coffee Street, a 19th-century warehouse in Red Hook, the artists will have three weeks to develop their pieces within this unique space. The festival will culminate in a rotating series of split bills May 18-25, so no two evenings are the same. We hope this curatorial collage will provide a new perspective on each piece, informing both our own creative process and the audience experience. The choreographers will also share their research and practice through free open classes.
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🎥 @allducksrock edited by @ahameline

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